Auguring New Direction, Hamden Cop Commission Nominations Advance

A new day for Hamden’s police commission has come into view after five nominees won the first of two needed votes to take over — and promised to bring heightened transparency and a more diverse outlook on public safety.

The Legislative Council’s Public Safety Committee voted Monday to move forward with all five of Mayor Lauren Garrett’s proposed appointees to the commission. 

If approved by the full council later this month, the crew will be tasked with reviewing the police department’s budget, voting on departmental hirings and promotions, hearing complaints of misconduct as well as making recommendations concerning possible action, and consulting with the town’s engineering, planning, and public works departments as concurrent members of the local traffic authority. 

The nominees, including participants in 2019’s and 2020’s Black Lives Matters protests, will replace commissioners who represented a more conservative wing of the Democratic Party along with Republicans — which prompted debate before Monday night’s vote about the future direction of police policy in town.

Not counting abstentions, the committee unanimously endorsed two individuals Monday night:

• Elaine Dove, a licensed clinical social worker who has served on the Hamden Zoning Board of Appeals and as a member of the Democratic Town Committee.

• Vaughn Willis, a sergeant in New York University’s protective services unit who has previously worked as a corrections officer in Connecticut and as an in-school suspension officer in New Haven. Willis is unaffiliated with any political party.

Three other candidates — Republican Town Chairman Frank LaDore, social justice organizer Rhonda Caldwell, and computer programmer Daniel Dunn — were approved with split support.

LaDore works in fundraising at Southern Connecticut State University and has served on both Hamden’s and New Haven’s Civil Service Commissions. 

Caldwell is currently an asset manager with the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority. She leads Hamden Action Now, an organization that aims to propel the voices of Black and Brown youth into local government and fight against police violence, poverty, and crime. Caldwell also has extensive experience in housing issues. 

Dunn works in systems design and web development. Right now he is a senior systems architect at A&I solutions, a business management consulting firm based in Georgia. He has also served on the town’s technology commission.

Republican Town Council members Marjorie Bonadies and Betty Wetmore voted against the appointment of the Democrat Caldwell as well as against Dunn, who is registered with the Working Families Party. The gist of their opposition: Both nominees have previously openly called for diverting funding away from the police department towards other community resources. 

“Anybody that cannot support the police and wants to defund them actually should not be on the police commission,” Wetmore said.

Bonadies asserted that Caldwell and Dunn had ​“well documented preexisting prejudice and anti-police bias.”

Meanwhile, Democratic Council Members Justin Farmer, Abdul Osmanu, and Laurie Sweet opposed the appointment of Republican LaDore.

Caldwell, Dunn, and LaDore all told the Independent that their primary concern is establishing greater systems of transparency within the police department.

“My vision is obviously to support Lauren Garrett’s administration’s continuation of what we’ve been marching for since 2019,” Caldwell said, referring to the year Hamden police officer Devon Eaton fired 16 bullets at couple Paul Witherspoon and Stephanie Washington, shooting Washington in her torso. She said she is looking for ​“accountability through transparency.”

“If the ACLU feels they need to step in and get involved, then the commission could do a better job providing oversight,” Dunn said. He said he hopes to bolster the sense of accountability held not just by police but the commission itself.

Dunn said ​“there needs to be clear evidence that whatever money we put into a public service has social value… that social value should be measured by the social outcomes of that service for people.” 

He is advocating for clear and public documentation of information like arrest data, including locations of arrests and descriptions of officer conduct. Dunn plans to use his background in data analytics to help unpack how policing is both hindering and/or helping the community. 

“If we’re taking an evidence-based approach,” he added, pointing to a rising police budget amid variable changes in crime rates, ​“increasing the amount of money we give to the police department doesn’t seem to correlate with a decrease in crime.”

Caldwell said that she believes the department is overwhelmed with too many responsibilities, some of which could be handled by alternative organizations and departments. She said transparency includes detailing the variety of tasks officers are charged with and allowing others to respond to crises dealing with substance abuse or mental health in order to ensure police can more effectively focus on combating violent crime.

“We’re not coming to harm and cause lawsuits,” she said regarding concerns listed by Bonadies that her appointment was risky and likely to put the town at risk of ​“litigation.”

“I’m looking forward to making this the best department in Connecticut,” Caldwell stated.

LaDore, slated to be the only Republican on the commission, voiced similar concerns as Caldwell and Dunn: He named greater transparency as a top concern. He suggested convening more frequently as a commission and creating a Facebook page on which to post updates and information about the police department while inviting feedback from the public.

As a firm ​“pro-police” identifying person, he said, he wants to serve to highlight what the department already does well. He asserted that transparency includes confessing and examining wrongs as well as addressing misconceptions and misinformation. 

For example, he pointed out that while the police department still needs to work on diversifying its force, it is made up of more people of color than the town’s other departments. That said, he said, he seeks to encourage more local minorities to join the department by holding discussions between high schoolers of color and police officers on a regular basis to talk about ​“what it’s like to be police” as well as what it’s like to be policed. 

“I’m glad the administration decided to put Republican representation on this commission because they didn’t have to do that,” he said. ​“In any commission, political diversity and different ideas and viewpoints is really important.”